


Wrath of the Gods

by squidiculous



Category: Saw (Movies)
Genre: Homophobia, M/M
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2015-04-03
Updated: 2015-04-08
Packaged: 2018-03-21 03:57:31
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 2
Words: 3,376
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/3676500
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/squidiculous/pseuds/squidiculous
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Daniel hates the opression in his divorced parents' homes, and after he runs into Adam, who invites him to a rock show, he enters a twisted world of inescapable shame.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Flyer

**Author's Note:**

> Once upon a time I was a teenager obsessed with the Saw franchise who fell in love with these two characters for different reasons and finally connected the dots: in "Saw II" Daniel is wearing a t-shirt for Wrath of the Gods, the band of Scott Tibbs, childhood friend of Adam, who is seen handing out flyers in a scene deleted from "Saw III."

Daniel had thrust his fist into his eyes, angry at his tears, and couldn't see when he barreled into him. Although he had wanted to be alone, after his father's innocuous gay joke hurt him out of all proportion, he was grateful for the human contact, no matter how brief it might be; and though there was hardly a moment after that when shame didn't dominate him, he never thought to regret their meeting. He shrank away, with no sense of irony said, "Watch where you're going," continued on his path to Anywhere But Here, and froze reluctantly when he heard "Hey, are you all right, man?" Concern for his well-being was a foreign concept. He turned back, wiping again at his eyes with his sleeve. "Yeah. I'm fine." He kept rubbing at nothing. "Who are you?" 

"Adam Faulkner. Freelance photographer and buddy band promoter." The man, cleanshaven and wearing unbuttoned plaid over a graphic tee for an obscure industrial band from the 1990s, displayed his camera in a lazy pose, and Daniel was young enough to find his self-deprecating humor charming. "Mind if I take a quick photo?" Daniel scratched his head then shook the same arm out in some form of a shrug, saying, "O-Okay." Adam gave no direction and captured him as he was: distant glare, arms crossed over his chest, crumply sweatshirt half zipped, vulnerable and confused. He was telling Daniel something about Polaroids when he saw he wasn't listening.

"You sure you're all right?" The man reached a hand out and almost but didn't quite touch his arm. "Yeah. It's just--" Daniel smiled, a flicker, at the thought, the feeling, the prospect too dangerous, of being heard. He wanted to offer a real smile but couldn't and hardened instead.

"All right." Adam slid the camera strap over his shoulder. "I gotta go." Daniel made a few half turns with his shoulders, making to leave then thinking Adam had something more to say. "Oh yeah." Like out of thin air he pulled something from his pocket and held it out. Daniel took it while Adam explained. "Cool." "All right. See ya." Adam walked past him then spun back around. "Oh. And uh. Sorry. What's your name?"

Not expecting for a moment to meet him again, Adam forgot about him until he developed the photograph in his red room. As his visage formed out of blankness Adam whispered: "Daniel."

Eric Matthews, apparently having managed to offend his son during the barrage of mindless comments he made while channel surfing, was cautious when he entered the boy's room later that evening. Daniel sat in bed, back to the headboard, computer in his lap, and didn't seem to notice his father's intrusion. "What's this?" Eric picked up something from the edge of the bed. "You join a cult?" He showed a small smile in case Daniel didn't recognize the joke. The boy snatched it away. "Just a flyer some loser gave me." He balled it up and tossed it.

"Okay. Daniel." The father sat on the edge of the bed, causing Daniel to close his laptop but not to look at him. 

He didn't know how to ask why Daniel was angry. He said, "How's Mom?" "Why don't you ask her?" "We're not exactly on speaking terms at the moment." "Yeah. Well, Dad. That's not my fault." "I didn't say it was--" "Mom's fine. What do you care how she is anyway? What do you care how anyone is?" "What did I do, Daniel?" "That's a stupid question." 

Daniel continued to stare straight ahead while his father, to his right, dragged a hand through his own short hair. Eric sighed through pursed lips. "Then give me a stupid answer." Daniel rolled his eyes up to the ceiling. Finally he looked at his father but only as long as he spoke: "You love people for the wrong reasons. You follow the wrong rules." 

The silence that followed made Daniel sigh. "You probably don't know what love is." Eric flung his hands out. "Why doesn't my teenage son enlighten me then?" The boy balked at making such observations, especially under the circumstances, even if it meant eternal discontent. "Whatever." He reopened the laptop. "Doesn't matter. You'll never get it." Keeping his eyes on the computer monitor, he never felt the pressure on the mattress lessen, but when he finally looked away his father was gone.

Left alone, he found the flyer again and smoothed it out. He called to mind every detail he could conjure, true or invented, of the exchange that afternoon. Simple subtraction began the countdown of days, which he mostly spent avoiding his mother and taking walks and masturbating in the dark, until the show. Before he laid the flyer down again and returned to his computer he spoke its most prominent words: "'Wrath of the Gods.'"


	2. Show

"Just out" was as specific as Daniel would be when his mother asked where he was going after dark. She supposed most teenage boys were equally laconic with their parents; his own being divorced couldn't make him more equable. Holding back a sigh, she said, "All right. Have fun. Be careful," as he closed the door. (She left the law-abiding citizen rants to the boy's police detective father.)

Wearing one sweatshirt over another, hands stuffed in the pockets of his tight jeans, Daniel walked with a hard look and a false confidence that betrayed the fear and vulnerability it was meant to hide. Eric had told him plenty about their city's criminal activity, the prostitution and drug trafficking and violence. Nothing else might have moved him to walk outside at night, and this would probably not prove worth it. What he thought he wanted wouldn't happen, and if it would, it shouldn't. Though he was ready to turn back, being at either of his so-called homes felt so oppressive, coming out felt good, even if it was dangerous.

Soulless brick buildings. Stripped cars. Graffiti marking territory like urine. Streets named after mythic rivers of Hell. A faroff siren started to sing when he stepped off the sidewalk to cross to the address on the flyer.

Beyond the decadent exterior the walls of the hallways were blood red. The distant, pulsing hum of a bass guitar, the plucking and tuning, growing louder, led his uncertain steps.

Upon hesitant entrance to a smoky apartment he attracted significant, unwanted notice with involuntary coughing. Not seeing the looks through squinting, watery eyes allowed an imagined sense of hostility. "What do you want?" Daniel kept coughing, and the voice continued. "Dude, what are you doing here? Hey, man, what's he doing?" Daniel's vision cleared in time to see a man with a mouthful of microwave Mexican shake his head and move away from the man, with a shaggy head of greasy hair and bloodshot eyes, staring at Daniel.

The dim space occupied half a dozen black-clad twenty-somethings, myriad sound equipment, and mismatched furniture stacked along the vomit green walls. Burrito guy went back to strumming, Red Eyes never looking away from Daniel. A woman, wearing a tank top, her hair dyed black, kept correcting a studded jacket--wearing, fat man's misconceptions about what was and wasn't a continent. A scruffy man with flat hair admired his reflection while a guy with a buzz cut and goatee sat next to Red Eyes with an ice cream sandwich that, at his behest, he broke in half to share with the guy who said, "I don't know what that kid's doing here."

Taking a bite, Ice Cream Sandwich looked at Daniel without interest. Right then a cacophony of footsteps and chatter drifted through the door, followed by the source, a small, rowdy crowd of so-called adults. Witnessing the consequent series of greetings and the low, warm hum of conversation, Daniel felt both comfortably invisible and uncomfortably out of place.

Without preamble, a grungy sound formed from three guitars and drums played by Mirror, Burrito, Ice Cream Sandwich and Studs. Into a microphone, out of the speakers: "Yeah!" Daniel winced. The assembly tipped beer bottles and nodded along. Then Mirror said "Wrath of the Gods" and Daniel felt goosebumps. To hear that combination of words, words he'd held, had whispered in dreams, seemed to unlock something in him. He lost the details of the music in the feeling--like the anger at his parents, only instead of suffocating he was on top of it, empowered.

It seemed to end too soon. One hundred fifty seconds of strange comfort from dirty noise preceded ringing silence. Until his ears recovered: then there was lazy talk and whooping. Cue recollection of his sober isolation in the drunken mass. He didn't see Adam. "That was "Blood on the Ground.""

Daniel flinched when amplified shouting, guitar accompanying, recommenced in attack. The next song said: " _What the fuck is wrong with you?_ " A sonic fist to the skull, it accused him of being a "pussy" and with an attitude of adamant belligerence urged him to "anarchy." His crossed arms tightened painfully into his scrawny chest.

When that one hundred fifty seconds of violent sound ended the band seemed to be on a break. Under the din of the crowd: the hum and dinging of a microwave. Inching back away from the crowd, he heard: "Oh. Hey. Daniel. You're here." He looked to see Adam standing in the doorway. "What did I miss?" Daniel's hand jumped to the back of his neck. "I--" He cleared his throat and, with the chatter, had to speak up. "They've played, like, a couple of songs." Adam walked in, and they stood shoulder to shoulder. "Which ones?" "Uh." Daniel licked his dry lips. ""Blood on the Ground." And--the anarchy one." Adam rolled his eyes. "That means I'm just in time for--"

Shrieking. A fast-paced, hundred-second song assaulted. It told an appalling story Daniel couldn't follow for the distortion and poor diction. Although he did pick up such lines as " _I'm not some fuckin fag_ "; " _Such an ugly hag_ "; " _Turned out to be a dyke_ "; and " _Fuck that stupid bitch_." The refrain: " _Pickin up the pieces_."

When it finished Daniel was breathless. "That level of misogynistic homophobia can only come from a closet homosexual," Adam said. Daniel looked at Mirror, the wolfish lead singer slash guitar player, with new interest. Then he heard Adam say, "I would know," and his entire body burned.

To deflect attention from that line: "Who is that guy?" "Scott Tibbs. Founder of Wrath of the Gods. Egomaniac. Probable psychopath. Highly overestimates his animal magnetism. We've been friends since we were little kids--if you have a loose definition of friendship." "What kind of music is this?" "I call it punk on weed. I mean--not to their faces. They all think they're Nirvana. Which isn't punk, but you get the picture about their self-image.

"At this point they've exhausted their own material. What you're witnessing now," Adam said, leaning a little his way, "is an argument about which other songs to render in their inimitable sewage style." As everyone looked on, Mirror, also known as Scott Tibbs, stepped forward to kick and knock over most of the drum set. "A--nd that's the show; we can all go home. Are you glad you came?" This was all said with an ironic humor, so Daniel was able to say, "Definitely.

"Is there--" Daniel paused, and Adam turned to him. "Are they doing another show?" "Yeah." Adam gave the band a brief look. "I would say, 'If they don't break up,' but I already told you: Nirvana; self-important; you get it. Since I don't know when it'll be--I guess you should give me your number, and then I can let you know." Having overheard, Red Eyes said, "Oh! He's here for the show." Daniel burst into laughter--as he took Adam's cell phone--until Red Eyes said, "What?"

Phone in hand again, Adam nodded. "Glad you made it. See ya later." He had turned when Daniel echoed him, and he had a quick exchange with Scott Tibbs: he said, "Great show. I'll see you later"; Scott said, "Adam," and punched him in the shoulder; and Adam walked away, holding said shoulder. He paused once in the doorway before vanishing.

"Hey, kid." Red Eyes again. "It's five bucks for the show. Did you pay already?" "Yeah," he lied. "Okay. Hey. Do you want to buy a copy of our CD? Self-released EP. Ain't free but it's ... What else rhymes?" "Money?" "Yeah. It costs money." Daniel managed not to laugh. "Five dollars, I guess? You want it? How bout ten dollars? That sound better? Sounds good to me." "Sure. I'll take one." "Oh, cool. Hey. Want a t-shirt too?" "Uh." "Hey, dude. Scott. Where the shirts at? I'm trying to sell one to this kid."

"You a big Wrath of the Gods fan, kid?" Scott's slow speech had a forced edge to it. Daniel noticed he wore a little black eyeliner, and thought he was sort of handsome for a stoner. In the face of a homophobic, rumored homosexual, he dropped his voice an octave. "Yeah. Best live show I've ever seen." That wasn't a lie, really, because he hadn't been to any other show. "Cool to meet you." He offered a hand Scott pretended not to see. "What's your name, kid?" "Daniel Matthews." "You comin to our next show, Danny?"

"Yeah. Adam said he'd tell me about it." "Oh, you know Adam?" This knowledge seemed to perk real interest. "Yeah. Well, not really. I barely know him. He--gave me a flyer." "Yeah. Tight.

"So, listen. You want to buy a shirt, Danny?" Daniel licked his lips, refraining from ums and obtrusive gestures of anxiety. "What do they look like?" Scott shouted over his shoulder. "Hey, pussies. One o you bring me one of the fuckin shirts.

"Trying to play "Beautiful People" for Christ's sake." "Hey, man," said Red Eyes, "you like that song, don't you?" "Well yeah, but the title makes it sound like a fuckin lullaby or some shit."

Wordless and dead-eyed, the woman held out a shirt. "Thanks, _groupie_." He snatched it and held it up for Daniel's approval. "What do you think? Fuckin cool, right?" "How much?" "You got ten bucks?" Daniel pulled a bill out of his pocket: a one. He pulled a couple more until he found a ten. With a wolfish grin, Scott said, "Pleasure doin business with you."

Then he walked off, shouting complaints about having to arrange the furniture again. When Daniel started to leave, Red Eyes said, "Hey, kid, wait up a minute. Do you want a popsicle?" Daniel's jaw dropped and stomach flipped. Ice Cream Sandwich, who had dragged a couch into the middle of the floor so he and Red Eyes could sit, said, "Yeah. We're out of orange. You'd have to have red or something." Daniel scratched his forehead. "No thanks." "Man, nobody likes the red popsicles."

Bass notes building up to something followed as Daniel exited the apartment building. The outside air felt much colder than before, because he had nowhere to go but home. After a brief minute wherein he transcended the tyranny of his parents' expectations, it hurt to put himself under their power again. Unable to look forward to anything concrete, he saw his days as an endless and empty expanse.

Now he could only wait. He realized he should have called or texted himself with Adam's phone when he had the opportunity. Then he thought maybe it was a good thing: not being able to contact him. For one, he didn't know what he would say. For another, if Adam had to initiate contact, Daniel would know he wanted it. Lastly, getting involved with him still seemed like a bad idea. Yet he longed for the ringing that would herald his call, and smashed his fists into his pillow when overtaken by desire and able to do nothing.

Over the next week Daniel listened to the seven-minute Wrath of the Gods EP more than a hundred times. He could tell, despite what each parent believed, that it was garbage; that didn't matter. This was his strongest connection to the man with the camera. Drawing on the memory of how Adam's presence felt, he masturbated while the song of Scott's confused homophobia played through his headphones. He tried not to dwell on the insanity of having such an attachment to someone he'd seen for about five minutes in total. To his dismay, he realized they had never once made physical contact: they even managed to pass the flyer once and the phone twice without their fingers brushing together. 

The strange joy of noticing that the first two tracks, "Blood on the Ground" and "Rules," had identical instrumentals preceded the alarm of the implications there. The image remained of Scott's rehearsed smile and measured gestures; the image of conceit and confidence that might have been a façade. The music wasn't the worst, but the level of delusion and narcissism Scott achieved compelled Daniel to find every flaw he could: the clumsy grammar; the weak word choices; rhyming fight with fight. The EP even ended with a shout of " _Scott Tibbs style._ " His favorite thing was the ambiguity in the chorus of " _Don't/Follow the fucking rules_ "; even the ending line " _Follow no fuckin rules_ " didn't exactly clear it up (as long as he pretended Scott could use a double negative correctly). Less charming was the declaration of violent, merciless war--on war. 

Breaking down "Picking up the Pieces" diluted it from the paralyzing venom of a snake bite to the itchy saliva of a mosquito bite. The first verse began with " _I met this girl/So I thought I'd give her a whirl/Til she got naked/Then I thought I'd fuckin hurl_ " then used several lines to describe how much her vagina disgusted him. It was more of an afterthought--among the refrain of " _Pickin up the pieces_ ," which Daniel determined referred to the act of reframing the events in his shattered psyche--to call her a dyke, as well as a bitch. In the second verse: " _So my friend set me up with this slut_." Then, for some reason, Scott told said friend that he was "not some fuckin fag"; that he simply couldn't "get past" the aforementioned experience. His friend convinced him to give heterosexual intercourse another go around: " _So I decided that I'd give her a shot/He said, if I didn't, my crotch would start to rot_." Familiar twist: " _Five years later/Story of my life/The bitch turns out/To be a fucking dyke_." "Five years later" was nonsense, and he had clearly decided to once again blame the woman and project his own issues after he was unattracted to her.

Lying on his stomach in bed with the EP playing again from the headphones plugged into his laptop, Daniel laughingly paraphrased lyrics: "'I just had a bad experience; that's all. I'm not gay--'" "You're not what?" he heard his father say. Jolted, he took the headphones off, sat up and looked at Eric. "What do you want?" "What was that about being gay? Did someone say you were gay?" With reluctance he answered, "No."

Though still confused, Eric decided to drop the subject. Daniel, however, felt sicker and sicker with what he left unsaid.

"But I am." "You're what?" " _Gay_ , Dad. I'm gay."

Eric looked puzzled then smiled. "No you're not." Paling, Daniel said, "What?" "You're not gay, Daniel. Don't be ridiculous. If you were gay, you would be--I don't know. What do gay people do?" "Have attraction to the same gender." "Yeah, I guess that's ... what they do. But that's not you." Eric paused and began to look doubtful. 

"Yeah." Daniel closed his laptop and got off the bed. "All right." He grabbed his duffel bag, mostly full, and stuffed his computer and headphones inside. "What are you doing?" Eric asked. "Where are you going?" Daniel walked around the room and packed a few other things. " _Where are you going?_ " After zipping the bag and pulling the strap over his head Daniel walked out of his father's house. The world spinning, Eric watched him go with a red rictus.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> You can see Scott and his unnamed crew in The Scott Tibbs Documentary on the "Saw II: Special Edition" DVD and, uploaded with poor quality, on YouTube. You can hear the songs herein described on the "Saw II: Special Edition" DVD and, apparently, nowhere else.


End file.
